Americans look at the Xbox 360 and see a dominant home console, one which has topped the sales charts for literally years, but it's not the same story worldwide. The PlayStation brand remains stronger in Europe, while in much of Asia - especially Japan - it's the dominant console.

Which probably explains why the list of countries getting the Xbox One in November 2013 does not include places like Taiwan, Hong Kong and Korea.

In an interview with the Wall Street Journal, Microsoft's Alan Bowman says that the regions above - along with Singapore and India - will be getting the console in late 2014.

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Leaving people to wonder about Japan. Microsoft's failure to win over the Japanese market has been a long and excruciating tale, and its absence from that list has led some to believe the console would somehow be skipping the territory altogether.

That's not the case; Microsoft Japan has told Famitsu it has plans to release the console, and will reveal those plans in greater detail at a later date.

The obvious reason for the delay is that Microsoft will want to allocate resources to the regions it knows it can sell consoles in. Another, newer reason might be one the WSJ speculates; that because so much of the inherent worth of the Xbox One is in licensed content like TV deals, there are obstacles it's going to need to overcome in regions that don't give a damn about stuff like the NFL.